I spoke with the trade association's PR person, Felice Farber, and she was very helpful. She said five of the seven firms, Difazio Industries, Grace Industries, Lomma Constuction, Crisdel Industries and Beaver Concrete are all member companies and have been around awhile but couldn't provide specifics in terms of how old they each are or how many employees they have. She said she'd ask around about Shamrock and Paul Scariano.

Farber was familiar with the Eltingville project and said the extra parking was needed. But she also admitted that the project wasn't necessarily the highest priority or "best use of money" in terms of infrastructure projects. "In New York City, we're so desperate for transportation dollars that those stimulus [funds] went to shovel-ready projects. If you want to spend a huge amount of infrastructure money fast, it's going to be bridge painting and 'mill and fill,' or paving roads."

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The Purpose of this Blog

To document the progress of a smallish taxpayer-funded stimulus project.

This one involves $2.6 million in funding from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act for a $3 million project (including state dollars for design and planning) to beef up the existing Eltingville Transit Center park-and-ride in Staten Island by adding 160 new parking spots to the existing 225 spaces.

Some $32 million in ARRA dollars have been tucked aside for transportation projects in New York City so the Eltingville dig is absorbing about a tenth of the Big Apple's 'shovel ready' stim funds. The lot was originally built in 2004.

This oversight blog was launched July 2. The Department of Transportation expects to announce which bidding firm will complete the project by mid-August. That leaves a narrow 6-week window to determine whether, at $18,750 apiece, these babies are worth it before ground is broken.

Questions That Need Answering

1. Why did it cost the New York Department of Transportation $400,000 to "plan and design" 160 parking spots?

2. Why does the NYDOT estimate that it will cost $2.6 million in stimulus bucks to "build" 160 asphalt open air parking spots?

3. How much did it cost to build the Park and Ride in 2004 and why didn't they build more spots?

Partial Answer: The original lot cost $5.4M

4. Will the extra 160 parking spots be sufficient for a growing population?

5. Why didn't they build more parking spots in the first place?

6. What is Beaver Concrete doing next door to the Eltingville Park and Ride?